Lamentations 1:1-22
The prophet speaks
The city is like the wife of a dead husband.
Once she was great.
She was like a queen among the other places in the country.
Now she is a slave.
and there are
Not one of her
All her friends have left her.
They have gone against her and they are now her enemies.
The slaves have only trouble and difficult work.
They now live among strangers.
They have no rest, and they live far away from home.
They cannot go away from those who do cruel things to them.
Nobody comes to
There is nothing to hear at the city gates.
The
Strangers are cruel to the young women.
The people in
Those who
The Lord has caused trouble for the people
because they did so many wrong things.
The enemies took the children away to work as slaves.
Her leaders are like animals without food.
They are too weak to run from their enemies.
So they remember the good things
that they had a long time ago.
When their enemies came, nobody was there with them.
Nobody helped them.
Their enemies laughed when they destroyed Jerusalem.
That is why this city is not
People thought that this city was the best.
Now they think that it is not important.
They see it as it is.
Jerusalem's people make sad noises and they want to hide themselves away.
They never thought that the end would be like this.
But their enemies destroyed the city.
They do not have anyone who can comfort them.
God did not listen any longer when they asked for his help.
‘Lord, see our troubles.
See how happy our enemies are,’ the people pray.
Foreign people have walked into God's
But God had said that people like that must not go in there.
They are not his people.
They are sad as they look for food.
They sell things that they love.
They use them to buy food.
That way, they can keep themselves alive.
‘Lord, see what is happening.
Think about me,
because nobody else does,’ the people pray.
All you people who pass me do not show any interest in me.
But you have never seen anything as sad as I am.
The Lord was very angry with me.
So it was the Lord who did this to me.
He wants us to turn towards him again,
so he has caused things to be very difficult for us.
All day he causes us to feel lonely and weak.
It makes us weak.
He has let the enemy be very strong.
He let them win against us.
So we cannot beat them.
He brought a big army to fight our young men, and the enemy won that fight.
The Lord God has punished us, like people walk on
He has let the enemy destroy the people of Judah.
Nobody will help us.
We are the children of this city
and we have nothing now.
The enemy has won.’
but nobody is their friend.
They are Jacob's children.
But the Lord has said that he will cause their enemies
to come from every country near them.
Those other people think about Jerusalem as they would think about something dirty.
We have not obeyed him.
Listen, all people everywhere, and look at us.
We are in very bad trouble.
The enemy has taken away our young women
and our young men to be slaves.’
They had said that they would help us.
But they did not help us.
Our
They were looking for food to keep themselves alive.
We are very sad.
We are weak deep inside ourselves
because we have done so many bad things.
They are killing our people in the streets.
People are dying in the houses.’
Nobody wants to help us.
All our enemies know about our trouble.
They are happy, God, that you caused that trouble.
Please cause trouble for those enemies too, as you promised.
You
Now we are ashamed and we are very sad.’